Many e-commerce platforms support customization and personalization options for products, e.g. attributes of the desired items such color, size, and shape and the ability to add text to such a product. In many cases, the e-commerce platforms enable the admin user to create these attribute options using fields that can be filled or selected by the user such as text fields or drop-down selection menus with a predefined list of product attributes. It is often desirable to provide a graphic user interface such as a configurator that enables the user to configure or design the product and to see in real-time how such attribute changes or designs will look when applied to the product.
In order to sell customized and personalized products online, merchants typically require an e-commerce platform that enables them to create electronic product pages (e.g. web pages), provide a “shopping cart” and manage customer orders.
In the prior art, the typical way to implement a graphic configurator and to connect it to the shopping cart is by using tightly coupled configurators and shopping carts. In order to achieve such tight coupling, the typical method is that the programmers of the shopping cart and the programmers of the configurator need to work closely together and are often part of the same team. Another method sometimes used or attempted, to connect between the configurator and the e-commerce platform is to use an API (application programming interface). However, the API solution is sometimes limited. The invention herein provides a new method for connecting between a graphic user interface (configurator) and an e-commerce platform or shopping cart.